Imagine our surprise when an email from a complete stranger showed up in our tips box containing the personal contact information—including cell phone numbers—of several 9to5Mac staffers, as well as a few high ranking Apple executives.

Last night Apple pulled the Developer Center offline for maintenance, but as is usually the case, no noticeable changes were visible when it came back up. As it turns out, the company was patching a very serious security breach that was discovered over the weekend, allowing anyone to access the personal contact information for every registered iOS, Mac, or Safari developer; every Apple Retail and corporate employee; and some key partners.

The issue was discovered by developer Jesse Järvi and brought to our attention on Saturday. A video of the exploit is below. We ensured that the problem was reported to Apple and ran it up the ladder. Due to the critical nature of the problem, we would never reveal this type of flaw to the public until it had been dealt with and we had contacted Apple . As of last night, the hole has been patched. Keep reading for the full details of how the breach was executed and exactly what information was at risk.

An exploit publicly announced yesterday (picture of source page available here – won’t force a crash) shows how a string of Arabic characters can crash applications in OS X 10.8 and iOS 6. The upcoming Apple operating systems, iOS 7 and OS X 10.9, have fixed the bug, but Apple was supposedly notified about this bug six months ago and still has not issued a fix for the current public operating systems.

Jailbreakers are already working to patch the bug over until Apple releases a full fix:

I have a fully working patch that unfortunately applies only in MobileSafari. The more general fix I came up with is not a clean solution.

This bug does not work on any other operating systems and does not allow anyone else to access your computer remotely because of it, but being a recipient (or even sender) of these characters may make your Messages app unusable, cause Safari/Chrome to crash, or not allow for scanning of SSIDs (if the string is broadcasted as a Wifi network name). Read more

As of yesterday, security company Symantec released a statement claiming there were still 140,000 Macs infected from the recent Flashback malware outbreak that originally infected an estimated 600,000 Mac users. That was despite Apple issuing a Java security update to remove the malware. Today, security researchers from Kaspersky said during a press conference (via Ars Technica) that it estimated infections dropped to 30,000, while still warning more “mass-malware” on OS X is on the way:

Kaspersky also clarified that much of the Flashback infections were spread through trusted WordPress websites that have been hijacked rather than through malicious downloaded files as many assume. Ars explained:Read more

Late last month, we reported Swedish security firm Micro Systemation claimed its “XRY” application was capable of cracking an iOS device’s passcode, logging keystrokes, and accessing data like GPS, call logs, contacts, and messages. The video showing the app in action is now removed, but the firm’s claims are coming under scrutiny by at least one fellow hacker. Will Strafach, better known in the jailbreaking community as “@chronic,” just posted his summary of what is really happening with the software to clarify the issue.

While explaining XRY does not use exploits similar to jailbreak programs, as claimed by many covering the story, Strafach clarified the tool is “simply loading a custom ramdisk by utilizing the publicly available ‘limera1n’ exploit by George Hotz. The ramdisk is not even very special, because anyone could put together their own using open source tools.” He continued by explaining the “two-minute” claim of Micro Systemation is only true if a passcode is “0000.” The time increases when a more complex passcode is set.

Chronic also noted XRY cannot be used on iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and third-gen iPads, something most publications are not reporting. Here is his explanation: